The Price of Going Home
by Mickey3
Summary: Just a few days ago, Beka gave me Hasturi's diary as a birthday present, said it was my way home, back to Tarn-Vedra. Her exact words were "Happy birthday, Dylan . . . you're going home."


**The Price of Going Home  
By Mickey**

Status: Completed 9/8/2008

Season: 1

Spoilers: It Makes a Lovely Light

Categories: Angst, Drama, Friendship, Missing Scene, PoV

Content Warnings: Mentions of drug use. Minor Language.

Word Count: 1,496

Author's Notes: This came to me while watching the episode yet again. I always wondered what Dylan was thinking while he was sitting in that chair waiting for Beka to wake up. This fic is the result of that.

* * *

If someone had told me a few days ago that Beka would become a Flash addict, overdose and damn near kill us all, I'd have told them they were nuts. Or on something themselves.

I would have been wrong.

Just a few days ago, Beka gave me Hasturi's diary as a birthday present, said it was my way home, back to Tarn-Vedra. Her exact words were "Happy birthday, Dylan . . . you're going home."

I have a bad feeling that she had an ulterior motive for wanting to go. Beka almost always has an ulterior motive for just about everything thing she does.

I'm pretty sure she didn't start using the Flash until we'd already made several trips through slipstream. She was her usual arrogant self (which isn't always a bad thing) at first, but she wasn't snappy or jittery.

I can't put all the blame on her. Andromeda is my ship. I'm the captain. I should have pulled the plug sooner. Hell, I should have listened to Tyr and nixed the idea from the beginning. As much as I long to go home, it isn't worth risking the lives of my crew, my friends.

After checking on Trance, or at least that's what she'd said she'd been doing, I don't know if she really was, she showed a considerable leap in her piloting ability. Talk about a big sign something was up. A flashing neon sign couldn't have been more obvious.

When I picked up the diary and mentioned reading it, I knew something was really wrong. She flipped out on me and snatched it out of my hands. "My score," she called it. That should have sent up a much bigger warning flag than it did. I blamed it on the stress of piloting slipstream as much as she was in such a relatively short period of time. I should have known better, should have seen the signs. Tyr picked up on it. How could I have missed it? Maybe I just didn't want to believe it. After all, Beka is arrogant and cocky but she isn't stupid.

I'll get into it later with Tyr as to why he didn't tell me sooner. I don't buy his "it was working" excuse. Whatever Beka was really up to, he knows about it. He may not have all the details, but I'm sure he knows something.

Her lack of empathy for what was happening to Trance definitely should have been a big sign that something was seriously wrong. When I look back on it, I realize that it was. I wouldn't have guessed that Beka was using drugs, but I knew she wasn't acting like herself. Instead of acting on my suspicion, I let it slide. Again, I chalked it up to the stress of the slips. She knew the effects that so many slipstream jumps were having on Trance. It damn near killed her and it didn't seem to bother Beka much. She's always called Trance her "lucky charm". Her reaction to the situation was just not her.

Then there was her increasing jumpiness and her standoffish behavior. The signs were all there. I just didn't see them. Correction, I saw them. I just chose to ignore them. I kept giving her the benefit of the doubt even when it became blatantly obvious that something was seriously wrong with her.

Through it all, she was adamant that she was fine, a little stressed and needed a break, but fine.

Then, she attacked me verbally. That's when Tyr informed me that she was on drugs. When I confronted Harper and he verified that he knew about it, she threatened him. I relieved her of duty and ordered her to give me the Flash bottle. Albeit reluctantly, she did turn it over, tossing it at me instead of handing it over. I ordered her to. As soon as I turned my back, she made her move. With faster than normal reflexes, even for her, jumped into the chair and made another jump which got us stuck in the event horizon of a black hole (and have I mentioned recently just how much I _hate_ those damn things?).

Once we exited slipstream, Tyr and I confronted her and she physically attacked us. Tyr managed to subdue and to escort her to V deck. I'm still not sure how she managed to get the upper hand on Rev Bem, or exactly what she shot him with, but shoot him she did.

I'm just glad that Harper is every bit as smart as he boasts that he is and that Beka wasn't so far gone that I couldn't reason with her at the end. Otherwise, we would have been royally screwed. We'd all be dead right now.

So, like I said, this whole mess is partly my fault too. She may be a captain in her own right, but on this ship, I am her captain. It's my job to notice things like that. It's also my job to protect the members of my crew and to put their safety and well being above my own personal needs. In that regard, I failed them all. Miserably. . . . All because I was so desperate to get home. Ulatempa Potetess once wrote-

"Come bitter rain,  
and wash from my heart  
that saddest of all words:

Home."

I always wondered what she meant by that. Home had always been anything but sad to me. Now I know. The fact is, since the Vedrans cut Tarn-Vedra off from slipstream, no one even knows if it even exists anymore, or if it is anything like what I remember it to be.

But back to Beka, I mean really. Flash! What the hell was she thinking? Why did she really want to go to Tarn-Vedra so badly? What's there, or what does she think is there, anyway, that she would damn near kill herself, damn near kill all of us to get there? I'd believe a lot of things of Beka, that she is capable of a lot of less than honest things, but never would I have _ever_ believed that she would willingly get herself addicted to Flash. Especially knowing that her father had gotten himself addicted to it and how that had affected Beka as a child.

Which all leads me to this moment, sitting here in the infirmary, half asleep. I have a very sore chest from slamming into the console after that last slip. I'm waiting for my second, and friend, to wake up and thanking God that she didn't kill herself and take us all with her. I'm also immensely relieved that Andromeda was able to purge the drugs from her system and save her life. I'd rather be pissed at her and be able to rip into her, than be pissed at her and attending her funeral.

I can't believe just how close she actually came to dying. If it had taken us even a few more minutes to get her to the infirmary, it would have been too late. It was more than just an addiction. I think, deep down, she actually liked being on Flash. Maybe it's because of her obsessive need to be the best pilot in the known worlds. Which probably stems from her issues with her father. Whatever it is, it scares me. I'm afraid she'll do it again. That she'll do it at a time when, for whatever reason, she isn't on the Andromeda and there won't be a damn thing I can do to help her. She'll die and I'll lose yet another crewmember. Another friend.

"So from now, every morning I'll wake up thinking about Flash. And every night, I'll go to bed thinking about flash, is that it?" She gives a little snort of self-disgust then adds, "What do you know? I'm my father after all."

No, Beka, you aren't. When are you going to see that? In the end, when it came right down to it, he let the Flash win. You didn't. You fought it. He gave up, but you didn't. If I put it that way, I know you won't believe me, so I'll try a different approach.

"In the High Guard, we pledged to hold the line against the night. That's what the Commonwealth meant. And on this ship, the Commonwealth still exists. On this ship, we hold the line against the darkness in all of us."

"I know. Dylan, I know. I'm going to have to fight it. Every day, for the rest of my life."

Yes, she will, but not alone. I have to make her realize that she isn't alone. She has friends. People who care about her. Ulterior motive aside, I don't really believe that her reasons for trying to get to Tarn-Vedra were completely for her own personal gain.

"And I'll be with you. Every step of the way."

I will help her through this because she is my friend. That's what friends do.

_THE END_


End file.
